## Intro
The purpose of this guide is to share how to save a track from Soundcloud into archive.org to allow others to download even if the original track has vanished. There have numerous questions asked about recovering a track from Soundcloud, while there is no way to recover a track from Soundcloud unless it had originally been downloaded, the purpose of this guide is to inform how saving a direct download link from Soundcloud directly into archive.org will allow other users which have same direct download link (which is different from a normal Soundcloud link).

## Caveats
Anyone attempting this must have 4 things

1. A Soundcloud account as download file option requires a Soundcloud account.
2. The person who uploaded must have turned on downloads option.
2. Some way of getting a direct download link such as [IDM (Paid tool)](https://internetdownloadmanager.com)
3. An archive.org account to ```save outlinks```, as simply saving a Soundcloud link into archive.org does not include saving the audio but will save info such as description, artist and name.

## Guide

1. Load up a web browser and visit the soundcloud track link you want to download. Then click under more then make sure download file option is showing. If not then the uploader has turned off direct download option. The only way to download from Soundcloud in such a situation is to use [Youtube DLP](https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp).

	<img src="/assets/soundcloud/download-file.png" width="400">
	
2. Click on the download option which should prompt a download, and this should contain the direct download link from Soundcloud.

	<img src="/assets/soundcloud/grab-direct-download-link.png" width="400">
	
3. Select the whole lot of the text. It needs to be the whole url otherwise archive.org may get a file not found error.

	<img src="/assets/soundcloud/grab-direct-download-link.png" width="400">
	
4. Go to [archive.org](https://archive.org) then on the right, should be a ```save page now``` option.

	<img src="/assets/soundcloud/save-page-now.png" width="400">
	
5. Paste in the download url quickly otherwise, archive.org may show an error that the resource could not be fetched in time. Make sure that ```save out-links```, ```save screenshot``` and ```save error pages``` are selected. if one doesn't see these options then an archive.org account is needed or needs to be signed into.

	<img src="/assets/soundcloud/save-into-archive.png" width="400">
	
6. Click save now and it may take a while as archive.org is downloading the file. Once done, a window may show as first archive. The archive.org url can now be copied and added to Musicbrainz.

	<img src="/assets/soundcloud/first-archive.png" width="400">